Marima's Story

Marima was married off at the age of 12.

She never attended school.

She became the fourth wife of a man the age of her father.

She endured 17 years of abuse, violence and hardship before making the decision to leave.

She returned home to live with her 90-year-old mother. Her children and mother depended on her. But the woman who came home was not the same woman who had left.

Marima once shared with us that there were mornings she never wanted to wake up. When she did, she often woke up with a terrible headache.

Some days her children would leave for school in the morning and come home in the evening to find her sitting in the same place. She would begin preparing a meal and later realise she had put salt in the tea instead of tea leaves. Other times the food would burn because she had forgotten she was cooking.

Women from nearby farms kept inviting her to come and work with them. She kept saying no. Not because she didn't need the work. She told us she believed they could never understand who they were inviting.

Marima wanted to be left alone. She looked forward to the hours when her children are at school because she could be alone with her thoughts.

If you had walked past Marima sitting outside her mother's home, you might never have known what she was passing through. We know because one day, after she finally found her voice, she told us.

Marima still remembers the day we came to visit her. Before we arrived, she woke up at 5:00 in the morning. She went to work on three different farms. By 6:30am she was back home with her pay already in hand, just in time to milk the cow.

Knowing we would spend most of the day together, she picked fresh maize and green bell peppers from her garden for us to take home. That afternoon, lunch was prepared over a three-stone fire.

As we sat together, Marima quietly said something that took me back to the first months of knowing her: "Joy, I used to cook for my children and realize too late that the food was burning. Sometimes I put salt in the tea instead of tea leaves. I wasn't present. My mind felt lost. I was constantly anxious and tired."

That afternoon, nothing burned. The tea was made just as she intended. There was laughter around the fire. Our conversations flowed with ease.

Before we left, Marima spoke about the milk business she now runs through the support she received during the program. She also talked about wanting her children to have the education she never had.

Walking alongside Marima for a year helped her return to the life that trauma had slowly taken away from her, one ordinary day at a time.